The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track, identify and locate goods has grown significantly in recent years. RFID tags allow manufacturers, distributors and retailers, amongst others, to regulate products and inventory, quickly determine production, manufacture, distribution or retail needs and efficiently intake and outtake items utilizing RFID tags. The RFID tags themselves can provide any desired product data and may be scanned or read in any of a variety of manners. One application of such devices is in electronic article surveillance (EAS) tags, which are commonly used to prevent unauthorized removal of inventory from a controlled area. The EAS tags may be paired with a detection system that is located at a boundary of the controlled area, and which generates an alert when an EAS tag is detected proximate to the detection system, unless the EAS tag is disabled. Typically, EAS tags are disabled at the point-of-sale, which in many establishments is a checkout counter that is visited after the customer has selected the items to be purchased and before exiting the establishment. The typical checkout counter format presents problems when faced with high customer volume and large quantities of products per customer, which result in long wait times and long customer queues at the checkout counter.
Near-field communication (NEC) is a type of radio frequency communication technology, operating at about 13.56 MHz and at bandwidth of about 2 MHz that allows for read-only and read-write communications between an NFC-enabled RF reader and an NFC-enabled tag. NFC operation is based on inductive coupling between two loop antennas, which allows for sharing of power and data between NFC-enabled devices. Typically, for proper operation, the distance between an NFC-enabled reader and an NFC-enabled tag typically needs to be under 20 centimeters.
NFC-enabled mobile devices can communicate with either host terminals or with tags or cards compliant with the ISO14443 standard and resonating at 13.56 MHz. Communications between the NEC-enabled mobile device and an NFC-enabled terminal can include data transfer, initiation of a wireless connection under a different communications standard, secure payment, and other functions. The secure payment capabilities of NFC-enabled devices allow one to conveniently execute financial transactions using only the NFC-enabled mobile device.
While NFC allows for secure transactions and other capabilities, NFC tag read range is limited to a few centimeters. In contrast, typical RFID tag operating ranges can extend out to several meters, depending on tag configuration and reader power. Additionally, RFID tags have a lower cost than NFC-enabled tags. These factors make RFID tags better suited for the retail environment, where functions such as inventory management, retail display monitoring, and the like require large quantities of RFID tags and greater read ranges.
A solution for integrating NEC-enabled devices, RFID-based inventory management, EAS control, and streamlined point-of-sale experiences is therefore desired.